Seduction by Molly Cochran

Author:Molly Cochran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books

CHAPTER

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TWENTY-EIGHT

After Belmondo left, I went upstairs to explain things to Peter, but I hesitated in front of his door. What would I say? That once again, I’d enjoyed a perfectly innocent evening with a man who clearly wanted more from me than friendship?

I knew that it hadn’t been innocent, not in any real sense. Belmondo had touched me—again—and again, I had wanted him to. The truth was, it was becoming easier to be with Belmondo, while every day it was becoming more difficult to stay with Peter.

There was no light under Peter’s door, so I backed away and walked to Marie-Therèse’s room. It, too, was dark. That was just as well, I thought. She needed to be alone for a while. I’d see her tomorrow.

As I got into bed, I thought about my failed attempt to enter Belmondo’s mind. Why hadn’t I been able to read him? That was a talent I’d possessed all my life. I could even read furniture! But Belmondo . . . had he known? Did he block me? Or had I just been so giddy with his nearness that I’d lost my magic?

I closed my eyes. I knew I’d been asking for trouble just by being with him. Maybe losing my magic was the price I would have to pay for losing something else. My integrity, maybe. My loyalty to Peter. My innocence.

And maybe I’d lost that before now.

Last winter I had an encounter with the Darkness. That’s a euphemism for something so terrible that it can’t really be named or even adequately described: It’s the distillation of pure human evil that lives among us all. Cowen can’t recognize it, but witches can.

The Darkness moves into people through death. When someone infected with it dies, the evil in them jumps into whoever happens to be physically nearest to them. Of course, no one knows if he or she has been infected. Evil people never think they’re evil. They just make excuses for the horrible things they do.

But sometimes the Darkness doesn’t just peek out from behind human eyes. Sometimes it likes to show itself in its true form—massive and reptilian, a creature more like a snake than anything else, but a million times more vicious than anything nature could create.

That was what I met last winter.

I’m only alive now because of an extraordinary sacrifice someone made. That’s another story, but the point is, I came close enough to the Darkness to feel like I’d be dirty forever. Even when it was all over and I was safe again and amazed that I was still in one piece, I knew that having been in the Darkness’s sights had somehow changed me. I’d been too close, gotten too familiar with death.

I’d never been anyone’s idea of a typical all-American girl, but that experience made it so that I would always feel somehow apart from everyone I knew. Tainted. Damaged.

As late as it was, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon, so I picked up Azrael’s book to distract me from my depressing thoughts.

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